XeroxCool
@XeroxCool@lemmy.world
- Comment on Seeing a sticker blocking a macbook's logo makes me realise it's a macbook more than just seeing the apple 3 days ago:
When you work in graphic design and everyone’s laptop looks the same, a sticker identifies yours as yours. My job has a ThinkPad problem
- Comment on Elon's Death Machine (aka Tesla) Mows Down Deer at Full Speed , Keeps Going on "Autopilot" 3 weeks ago:
A deer will shatter your nose fairing and snap handlebars at speed. The next object to catch the deer is your head and torso. No, the burly batwing fairings on a full dresser cruiser are not any stronger than the nose cone on a sport bike when it comes to a 200lb meat bag approaching at 70mph.
So many myths perpetuated by people who bucked classes and PRACTICE in favor of their uncle’s advice.
- Comment on Internet and smartphones have increased people sitting in their cars for extended time, but people suspicious why someone is sitting in a car for an extended time has not decreased proportionally. 3 weeks ago:
Exactly this. If you commute by car, this is likely the first time in 9+ hours that you’re not expected to perform for someone. Navigate traffic, do your job, navigate traffic. Some people can decompress and turn off in public transportation, but not everyone - and anyone driving from the station is probably navigating a shitty traffic pattern at the hub, adding to the stress of a short drive.
Me, I did it for all that plus feeling listless and like there’s no value in actually going inside. I’m gonna go to my chair and sit on my phone. So why do the walk? Why pass my parents and give some undetailed recount of my day at work? Why deal with a dog happy to see me again today and have to put mental resources into reciprocating when I don’t feel like it? Why see if my girlfriend wants to get dinner (and pick where) when I know it’s going to be 20 minutes of “I don’t know”? There can be so much stress with going into your home that for a few more minutes, everyone will assume you’re still driving but you can just clam up by yourself.
- Comment on A fair proportion of the suffering in the world can be laid at the feet of binary thinking. 3 weeks ago:
I read this as you saying OP’s claim was a fallacy but a re-read (and small dive into what type of Xerox you are) makes me beleive you meant binary thinking itself is a logical fallacy
- Comment on A fair proportion of the suffering in the world can be laid at the feet of binary thinking. 3 weeks ago:
I think you’re falsely categorizing action as binary thinking and supporting OP’s thought. Say I want to help people with some extra money - I have $100 (in singles) to give and 5 people in need. I’m not locked into “giving or not giving” or stuck giving to 1 person and not giving to 4 people. I can give everyone $20 evenly. I can $10 to one and $90 to another. I can give $5, $15, $25, $25, and $30 to them based on apparent need. I can give $0. Dividing this up into 5 individual binary actions… Actually, 100 individual actions (each dollar), dishonestly represents the overall opportunity and outcome.
And that’s just for one case where it’s a zero-sum game with my limited pot of $100. That’s a prime type of case where some majority groups would beleive anything not directly given to them is, effectively, taken from them - more binary thinking. That doesn’t account for status change, further income, and understand that social welfare budgets are insanely smaller than the gratuitous budgets of other departments.
- Comment on YSK about JShelter, a browser extension that attempts to protect you from being fingerprinted online. 3 weeks ago:
They’re just saying it in a jovial, not so serious tone lol. Maybe you should lighten up lol
- Comment on Large Boeing Satellite Suddenly Explodes Into Pieces 4 weeks ago:
At least it was outside. Better out than in, I always say
- Comment on Is it normal to feel tired of technological progress? 4 weeks ago:
So much anger, so much vulgarity. This is exactly how I describe each of these things. It’s fucking maddening. Add in resentment for another fucking app that, surprise, is a mediocre service disguising more marketing collection. But I’m the crazy one because I don’t want to just let it happen
- Comment on What do you call your first cousin's child? 4 weeks ago:
The only story telling I’ve heard it used was A Series of Unfortunate Events. Pretty sure each caretaker gets a cousin designation. But that, of course, is entirely fiction in an excessively diverse, rich, bodacious literary presentation filled to the brim with grimly austere vernacular from the Vocabulary For Defiants.
- Comment on If a planet was completely covered in water, wouldn't it all be freshwater? 4 weeks ago:
If salts were present when the water froze, the salts would still be there. If the ice is pure water but you can’t microscopically brush away all the salts during thawing, can fresh water be extracted?
- Comment on Tesla issues 5th recall for the new Cybertruck within a year, the latest due to rearview camera 1 month ago:
Rear view cameras have been federally required on passenger vehicles since module year 2018 in the US market. So yeah, regardless of the error, it’s a recall because the result makes the vehicle noncompliant.
- Comment on Facebook Is Being Flooded With Gross AI-Generated Images of Hurricane Helene Devastation 1 month ago:
While I can see lots of things like drunk windows and droopy rooflines, this really doesn’t strike me as obviously AI. Have you ever been to a mountain town of former coal glory? PA/WV has many towns like that. 150-year old buildings fighting frost heaves, people tacking on decks just to bring a little joy, signs that look 50 year sout of place. Sucks that AI has so much overlap with a poor town of 200 people.
- Comment on Why do Counterstrike and the other top 10 games on Steam NEVER change? 1 month ago:
Dropping in and not having to get back up to speed with a game has become more important to my gaming life than I wish it was. I don’t have time to change it. Even minimal-story games like Valheim or Elite: Dangerous have become too cumbersome because I have to spend a bunch of time figuring out what I did last, what I need to gather, and what I need to build to progress. I can either go mine/sail iron in Valheim, I can hope my pirate hunter ship and pirate activity are close to where I last docked… Or I can just play some basic game and take 5 minutes to get up to speed instead of spending the first 45 minutes recalibrating my memory. It makes a difference when you might only play 3 times a week and have less than 2 hours left. I’m hoping next year goes better, but for now, it’s battle Royale, team match, or racing games.
Obviously, there’s a massive competitive attractiveness for some people to games like PUBG and CS as well. But it’s not all trigger-finger addicts.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
The pizza boy union filed too many reports about closed roads and having to find another way home
- Comment on Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second 1 month ago:
It doesn’t say the screenshot must be full resolution and it doesn’t say the screenshot is immediately uploaded. A couple seconds to downscale and compress would work the same as far as content identification is concerned
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #6 - Forza Horizon 5 1 month ago:
You say you don’t care for Porsche IRL. If you have any interest in driving performance vehicles and have an opportunity to drive one, try to not pass it up. 10 years ago, I drove a 10-year-old 911 and it remains the best driver’s car I’ve ever driven. So precise, so confident. It’s what they’re known for. I knocked them before because they always looked so understated and the owners seem pompous. While both can be true, it’s still an excellent sports car. I’m out of the car scene and can’t talk about modern hybrids/electrics/SUVs and wouldn’t recommend a Panamera as the basis for your opinion.
FH4 just went semi-offline (no more seasonal or promotional content, still has online play/free roam randos). I wonder if that played a role in that pricing inversion. Last minute cash squeeze? Maybe it ushered the market away from 4 and into 5?
I do enjoy the FH titles. I wish there were more normal cars, but that’s probably partly due to not keeping up with the latest hypercars. With limited time to play, I spend a ton of time cruising in semi-normal cars across the open world. One of the unusual activities is 4th+ gear highway pulls in some blundering V8. Just hear it wind out from idle to redline. FH1 remains my favorite story because it actually had a story, it felt. It was shallow, but it had a clear progression of races, rivalry, and all the world building for the horizon festival. The rest have just too many races, tournaments, and events thrown at you at once. Every race unlocks 4 more. FH2 did an amazing job introducing the open world, drive anywhere style although I found the European map to be bland. FH3’s Australia was more diverse, but I was further overwhelmed by the number of map icons. I’m currently in FH4 and I suppose have finally accepted there’s never going to be another “campaign” style title. I guess that’s really the gaming industry as a whole with all the battle Royales and similar arcade-style games.
I guess I should hurry up and get FH5 before all the time-sensitively content runs out there, too, right? Damn consumer cyclism.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #6 - Forza Horizon 5 1 month ago:
It depends on the situation. There’s plenty of games that made the DLC era notorious by putting out games with only half the content as prior games. In the case of Forza Horizon, I feel they’ve provided substantial content in the base games, at least as far as maps and modes.
I will agree with OP about the number of DLC cars though, because it’s excessive. I wish I could filter out DLC and stop being teased. It’s particularly annoying when basically and entire manufacturer is DLC (Porsche in FH4 I think) or when some 3rd party sponsor brand drops a ton of “sponsor edition” cars. Maybe I’m just out of the pop loop but I do NOT need Hoonigan cars when I can modify any of the base cars to be stupid fast. I rest my cane.
- Comment on If the Olympics and presidential elections only happen once every 4 years, why the hell are we not doing them on February 29th???? 1 month ago:
Pretty sure my polling place is open for more than 12 hours. Maybe it varies by state, but that should be a reasonable amount of time for over 99% of the population to get there. Obviously, some places are massively overrun and understaffed, especially in the “unfavorable” districts, but I’ve had no issues making it out in less than 10 minutes by leaving for work 20 minutes early.
- Comment on Would it be weird if I took something my neighbor put out for trash? 1 month ago:
It’s hard to read the right context. There’s plenty of misinformation and incorrect beliefs out there so that’s why I opted to just dive into explanation regardless
- Comment on Would it be weird if I took something my neighbor put out for trash? 1 month ago:
Bedbugs are pretty easy to spot. While yes, they’re very good at hiding, they don’t really make it into those hiding spots until the easy spots are overpopulated. Sure, someone could have an infestation and could be vacuuming the easy spots weekly, but I doubt someone would clean their marks excessively without also addressing the problem. Sure, maybe this comment was a joke, maybe you’re serious, but either way, I accidentally became very fucking knowledgeable on bed bugs and what I’ve found ever since then is that people don’t actually know anything about bed bugs. Here I am. Of note, they’re not common near me, probably due to a mix of economic wealth and cold winters preventing outdoor survival.
If you can read text on your phone at the stock zoom level, you can see bed bugs because the adults are almost 1/4" long. Young bugs are pretty small, but you don’t get babies without adults and eggs. Eggs look like white/beige grains of salt stuck to edges. Their feces are brown or black (sometimes red) and look like what a fine-tip marker or thick pen would leave on paper. Individually, hard to see. Realistically, you’ll see clusters. They’ll hide in both crevices close to dormant humans (sheet seams, couch cracks) and higher places in shadow where they can see humans (picture frame edges, headboard corners). They live a long time. Even without feeding, they can survive a year.
There are currently a few pesticides with great results such ass Crossfire. They are certainly becoming resistant, but the more we eradicate wholly in a place, the less we have to worry - just like taking the full prescription of an antibiotic. If you do catch them, you’ll need to be very thorough. Bag your clothes and work through them. Pesticides have a residual effect, but the better you handle the ones you can find, the faster you can end the nightmare.
To wrap it up, just peel back the cushions of that furniture. If you don’t see stains in the easy-to-use but hard-to-clean cracks, you’re probably fine. No one I know has ever had them in dorms, just travel through hostels.
-Franz Kafka, or something
- Comment on Glass Antenna Turns Windows Into 5G Base Stations - IEEE Spectrum 1 month ago:
recital carrots
And I suddenly really want to play piano
- Comment on Headlamp tech that doesn’t blind oncoming drivers—where is it? 1 month ago:
I usually can’t tell the difference in a single oncoming car if they’re auto or manual high beams. So, given how often I know they’re older cars with the manual high beams locked on, maybe I’m not noticing slow autos. Sometimes I can see high beams flicking on and off more frequently than the average driver would, so I assume they auto and have seemed OK. Maybe I’m just too pessimistic about the average driver though and give autos a pass. The few times I’ve driven a Ford with them, they were OK. I beleive I’m very conscientious about high beam use so they were a little delayed for my liking, but I wouldn’t say 3 seconds. Like I’ll watch for light coming over hills and predict the car is coming and be prepared to drop as soon as they appear
- Comment on Headlamp tech that doesn’t blind oncoming drivers—where is it? 1 month ago:
Exactly this. If you need more light, fog lights (a wide but flat beam) do wonders in neighborhoods, especially around corners. Sure, I can see some benefit of illuminating the whole body of a person, but their lower half should be sufficient. Quite frankly, if someone can’t see them with low beams, they weren’t going to meaningfully react any faster with high beams. They’re either driving too fast, the pedestrian is stepping out too fast, or the road is too narrow.
It’s wild how this whole post is about the good of other people but my opinion of respecting non-driving people at the same time isn’t as well-received.
- Comment on Why do phone manufacturers use in-display fingerprint readers instead of fingerprint readers on the power button? 1 month ago:
I had a 3a and thought I loved the rear reader, but apparently I have my phone flat on a desk or in a stand often enough that I really do prefer the front reader
- Comment on Headlamp tech that doesn’t blind oncoming drivers—where is it? 1 month ago:
M. A. D.
- Comment on Headlamp tech that doesn’t blind oncoming drivers—where is it? 1 month ago:
A driving factor is the US requirement to place low beams above (and outward) of high beams. Couple that with traditional design goals of “my eyes are up here” faces (see: not the juke), you get normal low beams blinding every car with lows higher than mirrors. Then couple that with the factory aiming the lights to the max heigh with an empty tank and no cargo and sending that off to the gen pop, which is clueless about the ability to aim them.
Ironically, the low/hi arrangement requirement went against the original RX350 headlight design. It caused the creation of one of the greatest dual-beam xenon projectors of all time because the original high beam location was noncompliant. It got used as a big DRL I believe. Those “rx350” projectors were very popular in the retrofit headlight community, a hobbyist group dedicated to improving lighting without blinding others
- Comment on Headlamp tech that doesn’t blind oncoming drivers—where is it? 1 month ago:
Auto high beams have done a pretty OK job at detecting oncoming cars, in my experience. People blasting every fucking house in the neighborhood with high beams at 25mph, on the other hand, is where my ange lies. High beams are for high speed or aggressive slop change, not low speeds.
- Comment on Three Mile Island nuclear plant set for restart on Microsoft AI power deal 1 month ago:
I don’t buy that this is the last market. The current major one, yes, but calling it the last one is, not to be rude, short-sighted and unimaginative. AI/LLMs/advance algorithms will continue and some advanced technology will be built off of those. We didn’t stop with plain electricity, we didn’t stop with physical memory, we didn’t stop with plain programs, so why would we stop now?
There are plenty of markets outside this one niche of “tech”. And I get it, I’m the outsider in the fediverse as I don’t work in IT, don’t code, and don’t even use Linux.
I work in American rail transportation (a notably hot topic here!) and it’s incredibly outdated. Freight has such unimaginable interchangeability of individual cars between trains (consists) and rail lines that any kind of change has to overcome massive, disconnected lethargy of multiple groups. Aside from the shear volume of cars, it has to pass through multiple parties to operate on “interchange”: all involved railroads, the car owners, the car leasees, sometimes the good owner, and the locomotive owner (not always the rail owner). Freight cars have no mandatory/universal electronics on board. Brakes are applied via manual air pressure logic from a single signal hose and can take several minutes to reach the end of the train. Certainly, wireless electronic communication would improve this but imagine trying to pair 250 cars to the locomotive. We can say just add a plug like a truck trailer plug, but changing a 100 year old hookup procedure is a task, so say the least. Improvement is coming, but adoption must be rolled out and it must be free of tamper risk. There’s also essentially no tracking on rail cars. Services offered are atrocious. For maintenance, the latest thing is massive photobooths capturing every single car passing through. They’re pretty effective. And, despite all this sounding ancient, hostile takeovers, planted execs, pleasing shareholders, and running logistics into the ground for a short profit return to shares is just as present.
Side note: the only “unit trains” around, the only ones that stay as one single consist and don’t exchange between locomotives or rail lines, are coal trains. And they’re on their way out.
Passenger trains leave much to be desired and while there’s plenty of tech left to import from other continents, there’s not much incentive. The USA is huge and the populations centers are far apart. We like to look at Germany, the UK, France, and the like as examples but their physical size is comparable to the US regions already served by transit. The US population is much more coastal than Europe (Atlantic, pacific, golf of Mexico, great lakes) and, on many topics really, Americans tend to forget about eastern Europe. That’s our Midwest/rust belt/flyover states.
Road vehicles are ever-Improving but all I see here on lemmy is treating the privacy element as a crisis. I agree, and I can see why it’s important, but the physical advances are blatantly ignored. Hybrid and bev have large hurdles ahead of them to continue mass adoption. Aerodynamics and other rolling resistance elements are always improved. Who knows what the next paradigm shift in cars will be.
Similar things apply to planes.
Building infrastructure is always advancing. Better insulation, faster construction techniques, stronger materials, longer spans, less foundation intrusion, and greater durability.
And yes, we can talk about the continuous enshittification of all these industries, but, just like tech, that’s enshittification of the final product, not of the actual tech behind it. The tech has always been improving.
- Comment on Could I patent harmful technology to prevent it from being put on the market? 2 months ago:
Kearns and the car windshield wipers?
- Comment on Elements of Renewable Energy 2 months ago:
Modifying the dam isn’t the issue, you need to make sure the upstream area can be flooded. Not all rivers are in a canyon. You need a sizeable lake and consider how catastrophic an overflow would be. Then you also have to consider the effect downstream because you will likely cause a minor drought persistently since not all dams will dump into the ocean. So yes, I understand that “hydro” is both a source and a battery, but they are really 2 entirely different systems based on your other categorizations.
Same thing with the biomass. One system makes trees, one system burns wood.
The graphic isn’t particularly wrong, it’s just splitting some items and combining others inconsistently.